Monday, March 16, 2015

The Desire for Freedom

“I took up painting as a form of escapism from the monotonous and
tedious regime of prison life.”
Julio Cesar Osorio

The Colombian born British photographer and
painter Julio Cesar Osorio’s
life can be broken down into two distinct parts; pre and post prison. In 2012
at the age of 42 Osorio was confined at her Majesty’s pleasure for two and a half
years for his involvement in pub brawl in Central London. And as he told Art
Scribbles “I cannot imagine how I would have coped without my art.”

Prior to that fatal night in 2012 Osorio’s life
was that of a photographer who after graduating set up a studio in 2009 in
London’s Soho district. As he explained to Art
Finder “I worked in different fields of photography after graduating but my
main passion was documentary and [I] found it hard to make a living from that,
so I set up a studio and concentrated on studio work for a several years, and
did my own work in my spare time.” The image below, Puzzle, is one of his personal works from that time.

Deprived of his photography whilst doing his “porridge,”
Osorio took up painting to mentally escape the confines of his 12 x 6 cell. Of
his first attempts Osorio has said “it was slow going at first. I painted a
beach, and the first thing I realized was that I could definitely improve. But
more importantly, I could paint.”

And paint he did. During his two and half years
of confinement at HMP Wandswoth and Highpoint Prison, Osorio produced over 60
works. In a style that recalls the innocence of Henri Rousseau combined with
the imaginings of the surrealists Osorio expressed his thoughts and feelings on
a wide variety of topics. As he has said “I
looked into thoughts, feelings, emotions, conflicts and desires that I
experience each day of my two and a half years served in overcrowded and basic
conditions of the English prison system.”

This visual storyteller, who
today sleeps in his own bed, continues to tell his tales in paint, although the
contemporary issues of the day have replaced the need to flee the restrictions
of incarceration. The camera it seems has been confined to the pre prison part
of his life, for as he says “It [painting] has become my new passion and a new
story telling medium.”

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The expat

Henry Bateman is an artist and writer currently living in Australia, a return home after living in the Philippines for 10 years. The Ex Expat, is his blog about the arts (often) and politics (sometimes).
His writing has been published by Crikey.com (Australia), Artslant (US), The Expat Travel & Lifestyle Magazine & The Expat Newspaper (both in the Philippines) and The Western Review (Australia).
He has also had seven solo exhibitions and has had his work shown in 15 group exhibitions as well as 35 theater commissions as a set designer and/or lighting designer.